History of Brick Hill
Brick Hill is an online UGC sandbox game where users can purchase virtual items with virtual currencies, build in a with bricks in a voxel style 3D building environment, play on multiplayer servers, and make use of the in-site forum. As of January 2020, it currently has 190,000 users. Brick Hill has gone through a lot of changes throughout it's history. Early Development Alex "spacebuilder" and Luke "brick-luke" Dunn grew up playing block-based and creatively challenging games, particularly Roblox, Blockland, and Minecraft. These particularly sparked the interest for this area of gaming, and the ambition to create their own project began with rough plans and early concepts around the summer of 2015. This summer and the commencing year formed the basis of what would be Brick Hill, however it was initially called "Role Block", and although the approach was still geared towards building with bricks and creating your own games on a larger platform, the execution was significantly different to what is currently Brick Hill. During the first few months of 2016, the first concepts are visualized and versions are released. The earliest release dates found date to March 20th, 2016, where a log of updates kept for the first three versions on a third party forum. Later Development and Revamp Development of Brick Hill expanded with Luke's increasing fame on a similar and already existing website called BLOX City which he joined in April 2016 under the alias "Tetris". For a while, and especially during the latter half of development, this was where the game and its updates were advertised, as well as his Twitter. Many changes occurred during this year, including changing the name to "Brick Hill" after their hometown, entirely rewriting the game twice and redesigning it in this time, and creating what would be the first edition of the website and buying the domain in November 2016. Also around this time, beta sign-ups were publicized on the BLOX City forums, where users could enter their email on the site and they would later receive a key to sign up to Brick Hill in order to play during its private beta stage. Approximately 80 people signed up. Sometime in 2016 the database was reset, erasing approximately 20 accounts (although these were mostly test and administrator accounts). Pre-Beta (2016) * 18th March — Although the site was not made public at this point, it is generally agreed to be the date of which Brick Hill was "officially" founded, and is listed as the date of the Brick Hill account. * 17th November — The domain is registered and the site is now hosted. On this day, brick-luke and spacebuilder's accounts are created. Between this time and December other accounts are created, such as "SAS Soldier", "Johnny Boy", and "Donmo", however after various database wipes they are either lost of replaced. * Sometime during November and December 2016, development begins on what would be the first model of the client. * 18th - 20th December — The site is opened to various other members of staff, and the total member account grows to nine. Beta (Early 2017) * 18th March — Closed beta begins, and the initial users who signed up for beta access in November 2016. Of the approximate 80 sign-ups, only 36 purportedly registered. Other means of gaining access during beta were through staff selection or donating at least $2. * 10th April '''— First client is released for testing. * '''15th April — To end closed beta and begin the countdown to public release, the "Jackpot Page" was reintroduced where users who scored four aeo avatars would receive an Award upon registering their account. Public Release (2017) *'15th April' — Closed beta ends after 108 users, and the site is now open to the public. 536 accounts are registered in the first day and the first client is officially released. *'16th April '— The first event begins on Brick Hill, the Egg Hunt. Both onsite and in-game (a tradition that is consistent), the event lasts until mid-May. *'23rd April' — Although information surrounding the event is unclear, it is generally believed that the site was hacked and forced to roll back to an earlier version to fix the damage. A hat was created to commemorate the event. *'Mid-May - September' — A prolonged period of inactivity is experienced across Brick Hill due to staff neglect and migrating users. Little is done at this point to combat this. *'Sometime June' — At an unknown date, a developer is employed to begin working on a C++ version of the client. Although major work would not undergo until late November, and development would cease entirely in 2018 after both developers would leave. *'11th July '— The Summer Building Contest begins, with the top five entrants winning a hat. This was largely an attempt to regain some popularity on Brick Hill, although this was only partially successful. *'7th October' — Ending the dry spell of inactivity, the Brick Hill Client 0.2.0.0 that was worked on beginning in June is finally released. This update, as well as a Halloween theme and many onsite activities and events helped boost Brick Hill's popularity and once again return to its former glory. *'October - December' — Also during this time, a major progression was seen in staff activity and site interaction. Many more hats were created and community members appeared to be closely related to administrators. Many consider this period to be a "Golden Age" of Brick Hill. *'1st December' — The site theme becomes festive and the first Present Drop begins, where users had to perform certain tasks or puzzles to obtain gift items that would be opened on or after Christmas Day. *'17th December' — The Winter Building Contest begins. *'27th December' — Brick Hill reaches 10,000 members. A server is hosted by brick-luke to celebrate the occasion, and multiple items were created to honor the user. 2018 * 25th January — The Brick Hill Awards were announced and hosted by ellie, and despite reaching the final stage of voting, the winners were not announced until October 4th of that same year. * 22nd March — The second annual Egg Hunt is released and lasts until June, however after delays and setbacks, the final third map of the hunt (and subsequently its eggs) were never released. * 1st April — The first April Fools joke is hosted, called the "Big Buck Bonanza". * 1st June — Ezcha is employed and begins developing the next Brick Hill client. * 26th August — After the announcement that Brick Planet would be closing, many of their users migrated to Brick Hill and contributed to a spike in activity and surge of forum posts, which many considered to be a raid or hijacking. On the same day, a blog post was made announcing the plans to develop and redesign a new site design (and employ new features), and eventually release a new client independent from the last. * 23rd September — The Hat Design Contest is hosted. * 1st October — A similar event to the Present Drop is introduced for Trick or Treat buckets, where users have to perform certain tasks in order to obtain them. * 5th October — The second Spooky Halloween Building Competition is hosted. * 2nd November — The Brick Hill Murder Mystery event server is opened. * 1st December — The second Present Drop begins. * 31st December — The site goes down for maintenance in preparation for the new site, and the aeo jackpot page once again appears. This does not affect New Years celebrations. 2019 * January 1st — The new site is released. Various aesthetic and performance improvements are made and the logo sees its first change since beta release. Bucks and Bits also now have their respective icons, and the Friend icon represents the new avatars that have yet to be released. * 25th February — Brick Hill reaches its 50,000 user milestone. * 22nd March — The 2019 Egg Hunt is officially revealed and released. The in-game hunt however does not begin until April 16th. * 22nd June '— Brick Hill reaches 100,000 members. Servers are hosted by various users to celebrate the occasion, and multiple items are created. * '''9th July '— A series of mysterious Relic's start to appear in the shop. These relics reveal themselves to be other items, similar to the christmas and halloween Present Drops. * '24th August '— The Reach The Sky is announced and was up for a week before ending. People who completed the event got the Halo item. * '''26th September — The node-hill Event was announced, challenging users to create a game using node-hill. Users who made a sufficient game using node-hill before the 11th of October were awarded the captainHat.js hat. * 1st October —''' '''The third Trick-or-Treat Present Drop (unofficial name) starts. Similar to last year, presents are released with objectives that users have to do to obtain them. Category:History